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“Are you sure? You guys made such an amazing meal,” I said sincerely. My stomach was no longer miserably growling. No, now it was replete with the warm glow of delicious food.

“It’s fine,” Darcy assured me, tossing her wavy pink hair over her shoulder. “He doesn’t let me do many of the chores, either.”

I glanced at Fallon, whose bare, strong back was now bent over the sink as he happily scrubbed food from plates that Silar dutifully delivered to him.

It didn’t appear as if these two were doing this for show. It looked like they did this stuff for their wives every single day.

“Let’s give her the tour of the house,” Cherry said to Darcy. “Especially since it’s getting so late. Are you sleeping here?”

She asked that last question of me, and I found I had no answer. I glanced around, forcing myself to stop when I realized I was looking for Warden Tenn.

I didn’t need his permission to sleep anywhere.

And if I didn’t sleep here tonight, then where?

At the warden’s place?

Absolutely not.

“You can definitely sleep here,” Darcy said. “We have a spare bedroom. It’s where Magnolia stayed for a bit when we first got here. I’ll show you.”

Leaving the men to the dishes, Darcy brought Cherry and me into a comfortable room with a large bed and a beautiful, plush quilt on top.

“Fallon made that,” Darcy said when she noticed me drawing my fingers along the puffy top of the quilt, the surface comfortably fuzzy with age and use.

“Oh, God. Are you going to throw that over our heads again?” Cherry groaned, but there was a teasing glint in her eyes. “Because I truly don’t know if the three of us are going to fit.”

Darcy sent her a questioning look, but before Cherry could answer, I swallowed my embarrassment to explain.

“I may have been trying to create a sound barrier,” I said in a flustered rush. “I know these guys have good hearing.” I raised my hands helplessly then let them fall. “I just wanted Cherry to have a safe space. In case there was anything wrong.”

I sounded like an idiot. But, surprisingly, Darcy only nodded seriously.

“Good for you,” she said. “I wish someone had done that for me with my last fiancé.”

“I didn’t know you were engaged before this!” I exclaimed.

“I was,” she said, her beautiful green eyes flashing, “to an absolute shit stain named Massimo. He really was the worst. Because of him, I came here expecting Fallon to be… Well, kind of terrible. Especially after I learned about the whole murderer thing.”

Cherry winced and nodded.

“But…” She reached down to touch the quilt her husband had made. “But Fallon changed everything. My life. My heart. Me.”She shook her head and laughed. “I mean, look at how much of a sap I’ve become!”

“Truly, the sappiest of saps,” Cherry said with a dramatic sigh, clutching her hands together beneath her chin and batting her eyelashes. “Someone should write a book about it.”

Well, it certainly seemed like I didn’t need to drag Darcy under a blanket to interrogate her like I’d tried with Cherry.

It really did look like both of them were… happy.

Something in my chest squeezed. When was the last time I’d felt the way these two women looked? When was the last time I’d radiated that kind of joy? Maybe when I’d received the offer of my current position and was able to move to Elora Station.

But even the shine of my new career and living space had worn off since then. I didn’t have friends on Elora Station yet. And the job I’d been so excited about was currently my largest source of stress, considering the wholeI-sent-women-off-to-marry-murderers-without-knowingthing.

If Darcy and Cherry were happier here, married to exiled criminals, than I was with the life I’d worked so hard for…

What did that say about me?

Was this it? Was this all I had to look forward to? A future of being nothing but a failed and friendless human-Zabrian liaison whose greatest achievement was fucking up an interplanetary marriage mission?